Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 in for review

We're already done with the review of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro but we haven't done one of its less-expensive counterpart the Redmi Note 8. Well, it's now at the office and we've started work on it. The vanilla 8 comes with a 6.3-inch 1080p IPS LCD, a Snapdragon 665 chip with 3GB, 4GB or 6GB of RAM, a 4,000mAh battery and a quad camera that delivers sees the main and ultrawide cameras being joined by macro and depth units. The phone comes in a very plain box with a complimentary case, USB-A to USB-C cable and a 10W charger. That last bit is disappointing considering that the...

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Week 46 in review: The foldable Motorola Razr debuts

This was a rarely good week for tech news. The biggest one by far was the return of the Motorola Razr - this time in the high-tech foldable form. The Razr pays homage to the original Razr V3 looks but unfolds into a 6.2-inch Flex View screen instead of a 2.2-inch screen and keyboard. The main display is a 21:9 pOLED with a resolution of 2142x876px, while on the outside the clamshell has a 2.7-inch OLED of 600x800px resolution. The new Razr will cost $1,500 when it launches as a Verizon exclusive. We also saw the first images of Sony's Xperia 3. The photos show a slightly arched rear...

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Top 10 trending phones of week 46

Week 46 brought us quite a few changes among the most popular smartphones in the database. Xiaomi no longer controls all of the top 6, but it still has the most phones in the chart. This time it's the Redmi Note 8 Pro reclaiming the top, after the Mi Note 10 series lost some of the hype that came with their announcement. In second we have a Samsung phone that still just a rumor - the Galaxy A51. Not quite shocking though, given that the Galaxy A50 is by far the longest serving member of our top 10 and it's still ranking as high as sixth. The Mi Note 10 Pro is down from the top to...

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Flashback: the Nokia 808 PureView was from the future

The Nokia 808 PureView stunned the world in early 2012 with its insane 41MP sensor. We've covered the megapixel wars before - long story short, before the 808 showed up, the highest resolution smartphone sensor was 13MP. The 41MP resolution wouldn't be surpassed until late last year (Nokia's own Lumia 1020 matched the resolution, but that's not the whole story). The original PureView phone still holds the record for the largest image sensor ever at 1/1.2". For comparison, the 108MP Samsung ISOCELL Bright HMX sensor is 1/1.33" and the Lumia 1020 had a 1/1.5" sensor. PureView's pixels were...

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Weekly poll: Is Motorola Razr a folding phone done right?

This week Motorola brought us the third foldable screen phone and it's quite unlike the first two (we haven't forgotten about the FlexPai, but everyone else has so we aren't counting it). While the Samsung Galaxy Fold and the Huawei Mate X aim to become portable tablets with top notch chipsets and capable cameras, the reborn Razr took a very different path. It has a decidedly mid-range chipset and not a very current one at that and only two cameras. More importantly, however, its unfolded screen is barely bigger than the one on the Galaxy S10e. So instead of following the...

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